A Recap of UW Farm’s 2026 Earth Day Events
By: Phoebe Clifton, UW Farm Intern, Environmental Studies ‘26 
Each year around Earth Day, the UW Farm hosts volunteer work parties to celebrate the beautiful and bountiful planet we live on! The farm team typically plans to do something that makes people excited to get their hands dirty while helping improve the sustainability of the farm. 

We are excited to introduce this year’s Spring cohort of interns on the farm.  This year, we are trying out an intern cohort model.   In the cohort system, we are meeting weekly with the team of interns to discuss farm-related readings and develop a sense of community within the group.  Selection for our intern spots was competitive – we initially set the number of interns we could take at 10, but the field of applicants was so rich we ended up taking a couple more!   

06.26.24

Around The Farm

UW Farm and Teen Feed Reduce Food Waste & Support Food Security in University District 
By Cassie Diamond

At first glance, feeding unhoused folks and protecting the environment may not seem like they have a whole lot to do with each other. However, Teen Feed volunteers have found a way to do both at the same time. 

My-Lan Le will be heading our rare seed collections this field season. My-Lan grew up in the Bay Area of California and has eight years of experience working across the West in various botany jobs. She most recently earned a master’s degree from the University of Colorado in Biology. She is most excited to spend time in unique plant communities and the chance to compare different rare plant populations to better understand them. 

A seed’s journey from its mother plant to long-term storage in the Miller Seed Vault involves many steps. As our volunteers know, locating wild populations and ensuring optimal timing for collecting ripe seeds takes careful planning, and cleaning them requires close attention to detail. But for Kylie Gates, a fourth-year University of Washington student and Rare Care volunteer, once all the seed collecting and processing is finished, her work can begin. 

Barbara Varnum-Finney loves learning about life, all the way down to the cellular level. After earning a Ph.D. in developmental biology, studying a slim mold (Dictyostelium discoideum) at the University of Iowa, Barbara moved out to Seattle and spent most of her career as a research scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Concerned about increasing threats to native plant habitats, Barbara switched the microscope for a hand lens in her free time, joining Rare Care in 2012. 

The Miller Seed Vault will reach a major milestone in 2026: our chest freezer, purchased in 2002 when the facility opened, will be filled. The freezer, securely situated within the 4-hour fire-rated walls of the seed vault, protects over 1.1 million seeds of 160 rare native plants of Washington. Compiling this collection took thousands of hours and in-kind contributions of volunteers, donors, staff, and conservation partners. 

The Washington Natural Heritage Program has two new state botanists in its ranks, Dan Turck and Gabriel Campbell. Two sides of the same coin, they bring a collective 30 years of ecological experience to the program.
Both botanists had winding paths to end up here in Washington. Dan grew up in western Oregon. When he was 11, his family moved to North Dakota, where the striking difference in the physical environment made him notice and start to take an interest in plants. 

Along the basalt crescent formation in the northeast quarter of the Olympic Peninsula, where alpine cushion plant meadows give way to jagged cliffs, grows Olympic milkvetch, Astragalus australis var. cottonii (also called Cotton’s milkvetch). Its blue-green compound leaves held on pink stems, while distinctive, surprisingly blend into the dark gray shale and basalt substrate. Its fruits, however, are easy to spot, as a raceme of white and lavender-smudged flowers yields deep red, inflated pods. 

by Aisling Doyle Wade, UW Farm Production Manager
Later this month, the farm team will be beginning construction on a project that is long in the making, a perimeter fence around our Center for Urban Horticulture (CUH) site. 
In the 2024 season, the farm team experienced an escalation of a relatively new challenge – a growing population of urban deer eating farm crops!